Changes by automakers and the White House will create a fuel efficient vehicle double standard

"Since 2011 the auto industry has successfully ramped up the fuel efficiency of vehicles it sells in the U.S. using standards mapped out in an agreement with the Obama administration. The overall target: A fleetwide average of 54.6 miles per gallon by 2025. But now, with Pres. Trump vowing to slash environmental regulations, automakers say the standards are too stringent. In February companies asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take the first step in rolling them back—and the Trump administration has signaled it intends to follow through.

"The Obama fuel-efficiency regulations, finalized in January just before he left office, were projected to save 12 billion barrels of oil and eliminate six billion tons of atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide over the lifetime of vehicles sold. A rollback would change that and, at least in the short term, create two groups of vehicles, says Dave Cooke, a senior vehicles analyst in the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Clean Vehicles Program. There will be one mix of cars and trucks meeting a stronger standard for some states, and another set of vehicles meeting a weaker one—with more gas-guzzling autos that release more tailpipe pollutants and carbon dioxide—for the rest."

Full article in Scientific American

This is one area in which we disagree with Trump: achieving fuel efficiency is not only important for environmental reasons, but so that the U.S. can stop buying oil from Saudi Barbaria, which is primarily responsible for the ideology of Islamic extremists world-wide who see America as an enemy.

Although oil imports from the Islamist rulers of Saudi Barbaria have dropped in recent times, according to the EIA, that awful country still represents about 11% of the total: the objective should be to reduce that to zero!